Bilingual kid's?

In booming post-war Australia, the flood of ‘New Australians’ was expected to ‘speak English’ and assimilate as quickly as possible. Luckily, attitudes have changed since those days. Now there is active encouragement for new immigrants to retain their primary language. Barbara Briddock looks at how parents can help children learn a second language.

Being bilingual means that a person is able to use two languages, both to speak and understand, not necessarily with equal fluency, but enough to function adequately in either language, according to Dr. Priscilla Clarke.

Dr Clarke, an English as a Second Language consultant and Director of the Free Kindergarten Association of Victoria, says that the first six years are a very important time for learning language. Language acquisition is a complex task, consisting of sounds (phenology), words (vocabulary), the way words are put together (grammar), the way sentences are put together (discourse) and the rules of language use (pragmatics).

Because of that, Dr Clarke says it’s important that babies and toddlers are exposed to good models of language. Young children quickly learn to communicate with sounds and gestures. When parents and caregivers do likewise and use eye contact and body language, children are helped to understand the meaning of the spoken word.

Listening and responding is vital. Indifferent answers like ‘oohh’, ‘mmm’ or ‘Is that so?’ may send the message that speech is just senseless chatter not requiring a response.

If parents talk to their baby about what they’re doing as they play, bath, dress or feed, the child will relate the words to the meaning, eg. ’Here is your drink of water.’ From this toddlers will develop an initial vocabulary that relates directly to themselves. As children grow older, they will start to use language to express thoughts and ideas, rather than just naming objects.

Children learning a second language will be largely influenced by the attitudes, interest, enthusiasm and encouragement of parents or carers. If their parents are motivated and involved in the learning of the language, its development will be enhanced.

Commitment and consistency is vital when bringing up children to be bilingual.

As children learn two languages, they may initially mix them from time to time, especially when words and expressions that are present in one language are not in the other.

This can be minimised if the children speak the two different languages in separate contexts, eg one language can be spoken with mother and the other with father, or grandparents, or at school.

Some families prefer to allocate certain times of the day when the second language will be spoken. As the language ability of the child develops, they will learn to keep the two languages separate.

There are many ways that children can be exposed to a second language:

• Join or form a playgroup with other people of the same language background, where the children speak the language your child is learning.
• Attend gatherings and community groups where the language is being spoken.
• Watch bilingual children’s television shows together.
• Ask friends, relatives (and even the babysitter), who speak the language to use it when looking after your child.
• Sing songs, nursery rhymes and lullabies. 
• Develop a library of books, tapes and videos in both languages. Audio tapes for car journeys can be a good use of time. Encourage children to use the language to ask questions about stories, tapes or videos.
• Names of household items can be written on flashcards in both languages.
• Play simple games that involve counting, colours, shapes. Puppets can also be fun.
• Create bilingual storybooks, written in both English and the second language, using photographs or pictures. Laminating will help them to last longer.

As with anything to do with children, learning should be fun and accompanied by positive reinforcement.

Children benefit socially as they learn to respect, understand and appreciate other people who are bilingual or who are from different cultures.

Bilingual children are usually more linguistically creative than monolinguals. They learn that there are varying ways to express themselves and to look at the world, not only in language, but also through culture and customs.

In school-aged children, problem-solving and analytical skills have been found to be stronger in those who speak more than one language and this creates a flow-on effect to other subject areas.

Young children who learn, or even partially learn, a second language, find it easier to learn further languages when they get older. With an ability to communicate with people from other countries and cultures, future employment opportunities are enhanced.

There are more than 240 different languages spoken in Australia. Over one quarter of the population of Melbourne and Sydney speak a language other than English in the home and more than 70% of the world is bilingual. Even a small acquaintance with a second language can broaden children’s growing understanding about language as a whole, so beginning to learn a second language when young can actually help the development of the first language as well.

Contrary to popular belief, children don’t learn English better if they neglect or forget their home language. As parents and carers it makes sense to positively encourage bilingualism in children.

Transitional bilingualism occurs where the language other than English is spoken exclusively in the home while the children are very young and English is gradually introduced as the main language.

Serial bilingualism occurs where children master one language first and learn the other language later through a structured educational program.

Immersion bilingualism occurs where, having acquired the first language, children acquire the second language through being forced to ‘sink or swim’ in the second language.

Source – pamphlet produced by the Australian Advisory Council on Languages and Multicultural Education  (AACLAME – GPO Box 9880, Canberra ACT 2601)

Typical Pattern of Bilingual learning

Children exposed to two languages from birth go through certain stages of language development, just like monolingual children.

• At twelve months, with emerging speech, bilingual children have names for some things in one language and names for other things in the second language.
• Initially there is little or no overlap.
• Words may be used indiscriminately, that is without reference to which language the words are from, or who they are speaking to.
• Words may favour one language over the other.
• Gradually, children start to discriminate and use each language systematically.
• They learn who should be addressed in each language.
• By age two, each language is kept more or less separate, especially if parents have used each language consistently.
• Many children go through a stage where they are reluctant to speak the other language and answer in English. If parents shift to English, the language will largely be lost.
• Unless children are continuously encouraged to express themselves in the other language, they become receiving bilinguals, that is, they understand the other language but speak or reply in English.
• Receiving bilinguals can activate passive language skills relatively quickly; by a visit overseas or a formal bilingual education program, for example.

Source – pamphlet produced by the Australian Advisory Council on Languages and Multicultural Education  (AACLAME – GPO Box 9880, Canberra ACT 2601)

Useful books and websites

The Free Kindergarten Association (FKA) multicultural resource centre, Richmond, Victoria supports a number of programs aimed at maintenance of the first or home language.  It has a casual pool of over 100 bilingual workers speaking 60 languages and a library of resources available for teachers and carers.

Multilingual Matters is an international independent publishing house, with lists in the areas of bilingualism, books for parents and The Bilingual Family Newsletter.

Language Book Centre, 131 York Street, Sydney

The Foreign Language bookshop, 259 Collins Street, Melbourne
 

This article was first published in Australian Family Magazine, October 2000. Updated July 2009.